


Taste me, drink my soul

by prurient (brokenbeauty)



Series: Make me wanna die [2]
Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 00:02:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13111389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenbeauty/pseuds/prurient
Summary: Who are we, but for the rot of our pasts?





	Taste me, drink my soul

**Author's Note:**

> JBSBAUKJBU

Face down on the bed, the sheets smother. They're dirty, they're  _filthy,_ stained with— but it feels right, somehow, that this be Koujaku's purgatory, that these be the only audience to his muffled groans, that the blank walls, silent specters to everything, bear witness to this final denigration as well. Flames of black-as-night, flames that scorn all attempt at suppression, like they were,  _are_ madness and had just been playing at it all these years, lick away at the kindling of his consciousness. And the wilding-typhoon that has spirited away every last one of his senses is  _burning_  

 

 _Burning red_  

 

Koujaku has never been much for smoking anything besides fine tobacco in his cigarettes, but  _this,_ the fever that has possessed him now, he can only liken to the throes of a bad— _bad_ too callous, glancing a word for it— trip. Something he doesn't want to see, doesn't even want to deign to the existence of, but it has burned its writhing way onto the insides of his eyelids and remains seared there like an old scar, alive and twisted out of shape with muscle memory. Flashing before him intermittently like some horrible medley of the past and the present. Of blood gushing rivulets down Noiz's face that finds its way onto his own hands and he opens his eyes and he's standing in the midst of that absolute carnage and Ryuuhou's laughing face is a shadow somewhere and he knows it's all  _his fault and—_  

 

And it plays all over again.  

 

He makes a noise low in his throat and turns over, wincing as the brush of fabric scrapes like the thicket of long-ago irezumi needles over the patterns on his skin. It's hellfire, it's hell. And it burns like yesterday. Like it's alive and lending voice to the rage that simmers just underneath them.  

 

 _Rage rage rage_  

 

 _At_  

 

 _Ryuuhou_ _?_  

 

 _Noiz_ _?_  

 

 _Himself?_  

 

 

His body aches all over with unseen bruises and a balmy, tepid film of stickiness, and— _fuck—_ sure enough, when he pinches a strand of hair between two fingers, raises it to his line of sight, he fights the urge to clench his eyes shut. He wants to drive the offending fist into the bedpost at the undeniable evidence of his own monstrosity spelled out before him in flaming scarlet tones. 

 

Flaming scarlet hair.  

 

Hatred and pain and anger and all semblance thereof gradually warps itself into some sick, acrid mixture in his gut, building and building with the rise of bile in his throat. 

 

 _This body of his, this body of a monster._  

 

Until he half-sprawls himself over the floor, limbs screaming, to the little adjoining bathroom and throws it up, feeling, with each heave and shudder of his body, like something foul is being scooped out of his chest and splattered into the bowl.  

 

 _This body of his, made to destroy._  

 

It's not a bad feeling.  

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

He'd like to tell himself that nothing changed. That after that afternoon, there was no definitive tilt shift in the mismatched jigsaw pieces of Midorijima and no subtle change in his equation with it. That he doesn't tense just that extra bit whenever he sights so much as a flash of unnaturally bright hair. That the blond brat doesn't have a part in it every time his tattoos burn in bed when he's alone at night with the amber glow of his cigarette casting long shadows across his past. 

 

That he can look Aoba in the eye anymore.  

 

But he carries on, because he's Koujaku and that's what he  _does._ He cuts hair and he flirts shamelessly and he tries to not think. Stows all of it under his skin with the beast that flits in and out of consciousness and the secrets and scars—guards them with his life, baring his teeth at anyone who dares come close. 

 

And he succeeds. He succeeds for the most part, the livid, violently effervescent mix of time past, writhing with tones of blood and hatred and love and Noiz and Aoba only rearing up in his throat like the burn of too-quick alcohol when Mizuki's piercing gaze lingers a beat too long at Black Needle; some petite woman's hair flashing blue or brilliant blond only when he's in bed with her trying too hard to drown out muscle memory of another body. But he's carried his scars for so long, gathering them like sakura fall, putting them away like something precious. He can deal with a few more. 

 

Until, of course, it all goes to shit.  

 

He's at Black Needle and drunk—and that's  _never_ a good combination and he should have known it—and then he sees  _it._ Ryuuhou's handiwork, his mark right there and in framed glory on Mizuki's table. 

 

The rage—the madness—comes rushing up so fast he almost chokes on it. His vision tunnels, and somewhere there is a tiny, tiny voice that sounds painfully like—like someone he used to know screaming as loud as it can for him to stop. And for a moment, he swears he does. Jerks his head back like a confused child looking for directions in the face of an influx of stimulus. But then, with an ugly sound like the tearing of flesh, a meaty thump, it's gone, and it's all white noise again. 

 

Before he knows what he's doing, before he can yank his careening mind to attention sparking off the rails, he's moving. Swift, sinuous, nails lengthening, curling into claws, he lunges. Intending to— _what,_ he doesn't know, except  _destroy._ Rip that god-fucking-damned photograph to shreds, like  _ha,_ some manic voice in his head which has the shape and feel of green eyes and a constant smirk tells him,  _like you'll ever be able to retribute in kind to your self._  

 

It takes the combined strength of three people to pull him away. And that of another voice for his blown-to-slits pupils to contract back to normalcy.  

 

And yet. And  _yet_ the softness of almost-feminine hands at his face, the lull of a wheedling, questioning voice, when he registers these and that only ever one can drudge him back down to cold sanity in the sharp tug-back of a fingernail on skin, adrenaline blots through him like ink in water.  _Sane_ adrenaline, fight-or-flight, because he'd rather, even in this state, fight his own demons than Aoba. So there's nothing left for him, really.  

 

 _But was there ever?_  

 

He twists out of the holds on himself with a flex of his muscles, and can barely think to be surprised at their sudden, inhuman strength, can barely think to flinch away from that word. Because  _fuck_ his head is rife with Aoba's scent, and his blood is pounding in his veins to the tune of  _Ryuuhou_ _,_ _Ryuuhou_ _,_ _Ryuuhou_ _,_ even as he runs. Runs to that same beat, and if he were anywhere near himself right now, he'd laugh. At how square one is his default every time the oily black flames are stoked, at how the marionette string reels back so effortlessly into that creature's hands as soon as the ugly rears its head.  

 

And so he runs. 

 

He's flying blind, shots in the dark, vision, hearing, senses all shorted out under the inferno of instinct and all he has to go on are traces of iron, of rust and salt and expensive perfume, all undertones in swirls of  _aggression._  

 

And it's a wolf baying its like, and so Koujaku runs, runs on gut feeling, callous in its disregard for shrapnel grazing his skin, muscles feeding into the burn of it as they contract and stretch. And it gets hotter and hotter the deeper he goes in, a chasing drug, a feeling he can't get enough of in the excruciation of it. He's panting, maybe, sweat saturating his skin as he gets closer and closer to the pulsing, throbbing nerve center of— _it_ , of that scent that claws right up into the back of his nose to sting like glances of black-tinted shards.  

 

It's some sort of wicked irony that it somehow escapes his razor-sharp senses amidst the sensory overload when he crashes right smack bang into the middle of it, shoulder-checking a solid mass into the wall in that wild rush of power, of speed. It forces a low growl past his throat, his hackles rising with the threat of it, and his vision clears just enough to let him make out shapes, makes out colors beyond the red blur.  

 

And the shock of it, what he sees, the muscle memory of that touch, is almost enough to galvanize him back to sanity, almost enough for his vision to completely bloody over and push him past the point of no return. 

 

Because what's staring him down with icy coolness is a green gaze, what he's unthinkingly barreled into is the lithe form which makes the markings on his back smolder.  

 

And everything freezes, in time, even as hands almost unbearably cold to his fevered skin come up to trace columns of frost into his cheeks; even as that bright, bright hair and those strangely limpid eyes draw in breathless proximity to himself.  

 

For a moment, the inside of Koujaku's head goes eerily quiet.  

 

And then he reels. The force of the subsequent slap amplified all the more by the stillness which had preceded it.  

 

A snarl reverberates in his throat as he rears back after the shock of it has passed, muscles tensing in preparation to launch himself at Noiz. A roar of wind, and something distant, far-off and broken in it that sounds like a woman's scream. 

 

And then everything goes black. 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

It is an incessant beeping which drags him back to the dregs of his conscious. Like clawing his way out of an abyss, his vision swims, careens before focusing on the dim glow beside him—a night light?  

 

No, as his line of sight clears, he makes out a computer screen. A figure in front of the computer screen.  

 

He suddenly has a very bad premonition.  

 

"Urgh." 

 

He doesn't know what it's supposed to be, but the strangled sound which eventually does leave his throat serves its purpose, in the end. It catches the attention of the figure, which visibly stiffens.  

 

"I suppose all shitty old men have long recuperative windows, then."  

 

And yeah, Koujaku's premonition isn't just that any more.  

 

A multitude of questions rise in his throat, but his throat dries and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth in the most inconvenient way, making them die out.  

 

"What—just—," is the most comprehensive he manages, and Noiz finally turns around, eyeing him with that look of contempt he knows so well.  

 

"I don't suppose you remember going on  _kuchisake_ _onna_ on me earlier?"  

 

A cold shiver makes its way down Koujaku's spine, then, as his memory grasps at its fragments to curl around itself, construct from Rembrandts and shrapnel what his own synapses deny it. Catching glimpses of bruised vision, of a crimson blaze and  _flying._  

 

It's enough. 

 

A number of possible answers to that—denials, deflection, wrath—appeal to his splintered reason, all losing the name of action at the  _knowing_ in the stillness of those eyes. They look him over unflinchingly, assuring of the futility of any of them.  

 

"...Why."  

 

He settles on that, finally, settles on sidestepping the landmine that is sure to destroy him when it explodes. So he buys time. "Why did you bring me here?"  

 

There's really not much room for Noiz to tense further, but he does anyway, one hand almost unconsciously reaching up to fiddle with the earpiece in his ear. Koujaku—he  _knows_ what to make of that, and yet he doesn't because he's seen that set of expressions before, but it's been on women and the brat doesn't  _get_ nervous.  

 

"You were an eyesore, old man. What did you expect anyone with an ounce of civic sense to do?"  

 

And—yeah, there it is. Familiarity for you. Before Koujaku can rifle through his muddled brain a retort to that, Noiz gets up abruptly and makes for the door, pausing only to throw a  _I trust you can show yourself out_ over his shoulder.  

 

Left to his own devices, Koujaku tries to hoist himself up onto his elbows, then quickly gives up at the flare of pain through his skull, sinking back down. A sharp throbbing has started somewhere behind his eyes, and any movement only exacerbates it. Like it or not, he supposes, this house is going to be his prison until he recuperates. 

 

He closes his eyes for lack of anything better to do, then, and tries to piece together his shattered memory, from going to Black Needle to  _snapping_ to—however he managed to run into Noiz. It's an exercise in futility, though, like trying to wave away a smog with his bare hands, like diving for pearls without a tether and coming up empty and gasping for air. It takes its toll on him, and before he knows it, sleep is snaking its searching tendrils over his consciousness as it slowly fades. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

When his eyes jar open the second time, it’s more out of shock than anything else. He jerks awake to a raging cacophony of crashing metal. A moment of frozen panic before the reality of it sucker-punches into his gut and a stab of white-hot pain shoots through his temples. He mutters out a curse, gathering his hopelessly scattered bearings and rubbing, with them, the last lingering traces of sleep from his eyes. 

 

He props himself up on a shaky elbow, and finds, suddenly, that he can’t sit still. The fatigue hasn’t completely left his body, but he stands up nevertheless— and jumps a foot in the air when his feet brush against something. It takes a moment for him to realize that they’re nothing more threatening than his own slippers, stacked neatly at his bedside. Another for it to register enough for him to slide his feet into them. Utterly nonplussed, the room seems to careen in on him at strange angles. He closes his eyes. Takes one, two shuddering breaths before opening them again and making a conscious effort to take in his surroundings.  

 

Now that he's looking, though, the size of the room makes him suck in a disbelieving breath. It is, easily, he notes while walking from the bed to the floor-to-ceiling window, twice the size of his own bedroom. The sparse furnishings make the spaciousness of the room even more intimidating, he thinks, shuddering, while making his way to the door.  

 

"No lock?" He mutters to himself when the doorknob gives under barely a touch, brows furrowing. There is something strangely discomfiting about the fact, something unexpected.  

 

He shakes his head to clear it. Maybe he'd pegged Noiz as someone who'd have triple-security locks on every door, and maybe he's rarely wrong about people, but it really doesn't matter. What  _does_ is leaving this place, and fast. 

 

He pulls the door open, heads out across a hallway which opens into a living room. That's about as far as he gets before he stops short, gasps. 

 

The room before him seems  _alive,_ with code flashing lightning-fast across a computer screen which comprises an entire wall, the glow from it bleaching the room pale green, pale white. More beeping devices than he's even seen in Junk Shop Heibon are hooked up to it—he thinks he spies those annoying-as-hell rabbit cubes of Noiz's charging, even. It's easily more technology than he's ever seen in his life and it's making him faint. 

 

"Does this kid do nothing—" he begins to himself, but the mumble catches in his throat as he spies a splatter of brilliant red near his foot. He back away hurriedly, but in doing so, he notices another. And another.  

 

"What the fuck," he mutters as, despite all his instincts screaming at him to  _leave it the fuck alone_ and bolt for the entryway he sees in his peripheral vision, he follows the trail. Down across the room, to the light filtering out of an open door. He hesitates for a minute, then grits his teeth and enters.  

 

"Fuck off."  

 

The brat must be more aware than Koujaku would think, because the interjection comes from a turned back as soon as he steps foot in the room—apparently a kitchen and the source sound of his gentle awakening, judging by the mess of utensils on the floor.  

 

"Can't do that if the house looks like a first-degree murder." 

 

Noiz huffs a sigh of annoyance before turning around and directing the full force of his displeasure at Koujaku. It's only then that Koujaku locates the source of the blood—Noiz is pressing a kitchen towel against a sizeable gash on his palm.  

 

"Looks like I'm still doing a better job at handling myself than you are, at this point."  

 

Koujaku feels a spike of that familiar anger course through him, the one that only seems to surface when Noiz is around. He balls his fists, grits his teeth—feeling, in a disorganized, acrid cocktail of it all, more and more hopelessly confused. There're so many things about this place, its occupant, that  _just don't add up_ , and it's like—like he can't even begin to identify the loose ends, let alone gather them up. The sheer contradiction of it all leaves him reeling at the feet of something large and immutable, and it's all he can do to force the words past his throat. 

 

"Why did you bring me here?" 

 

"Your dementia is acting up again, old man. You've already asked me this, and the answer isn't going to change in an hour and a quarter."  

 

And there it is again. The hopeless, mute frustration he feels whenever that goddamn lack of expression stonewalls him. He knows it's petty—getting into a verbal spar with someone half his age isn't going to get him anywhere closer to an answer—but, at this point, he just wants to tread on a nerve.  

 

"My dementia isn't as bad as yours. At least I can remember to put locks on my doors."  

 

And— _bingo—_ something dangerous flashes in Noiz's eyes at that, so brief before he steels himself that Koujaku could have imagined it if he didn't know better.  

 

"I see you can walk. Why don't you use your newfound skills and show yourself the door?"  

 

Koujaku knows that doing just that would be the best course of action, to go home and pretend that this whole convoluted mess never happened in the first place, but something about that just doesn't sit right with him. Shitty brat as he might be, Noiz had—he'd  _saved_ Koujaku.  

 

Even under attack.  

 

Attack from  _him._  

 

And Koujaku will  _not_ be beholden to him. 

 

He shakes his head, as if that action will tamp down on the unwelcome thought. Emotion would be the worst thing to display in the situation, he knows.  

 

"Show me that," he mutters after a pause, gesturing to Noiz's bleeding hand. 

 

"For what joy?"  

 

Koujaku just sighs, walks over, and forces Noiz's hand into his line of sight as he struggles.  

 

"What the fuck? Let go!" 

 

Koujaku ignores him in favor of examining the cut, turning Noiz's taut hand this way and that. 

 

"The cut is pretty deep, but I don't think you'll need stitches. I'll clean it and you should be fine." 

 

He lets go of Noiz's hand, reaches for the dishcloth. 

 

The next thing he knows is a searing pain spreading through his jaw, snapping his head to the side. 

 

"Who the  _fuck_ do you think you are?" Noiz is panting slightly from the force of the punch when Koujaku's vision focuses again, a pink stain just beginning to creep across his cheeks. But for some reason, that familiar anger has deserted him, and the inside of his head is silent as a sepulcher. 

 

Because somewhere inside him, it feels like he's won. 

 

So he silently reaches for Noiz's hand again, wets the dishcloth, and begins cleaning the wound. Something seems to have gone out in the younger, the brief flicker of a light before it sublimates into limp tendrils of smoke.  

 

And  _limp_ is probably the best word for it as the fight goes out of Noiz and he lets Koujaku go about his business in silence. 

 

"If you wanted a round two, you could just have asked, old man."  

 

It takes a moment of stunned silence in the wake of Noiz's deadpan statement for Koujaku to even register what has been said. When he does, he jerks so violently that it pushes the edge of the towel deep into the wound. 

 

"Sorry," he mutters on reflex, but the shudder and the wince he's expecting never come. When he looks up, Noiz is staring off into space, seemingly unaware.  

 

A thousand questions jump to his tongue, a thousand impulses urge his fists to action. But when his mouth does open, he's surprised at what comes out. 

 

"Why do you like pain so much?" 

 

Noiz doesn't look at him. There's an eerie lifelessness about him when he replies.  

 

"The same reason you like giving it to me. We're both fucked-up people." 

 

And Koujaku doesn't know what to say to that, really, doesn't know how to put the wrenching into his chest into words. Because here this kid is, looking him in the eye and telling him he believes that the two of them are just as fucked-up as each other. Having the audacity to make that claim just brushing past Koujaku's past—his present. 

 

But it doesn't trigger his anger. Or his scorn. No, it just gives rise to that—that  _wrenching._ Because somewhere inside him, he knows that not a word of that claim is probably misplaced.  

 

Suddenly, and yet like it had been coming from the moment he first forced Noiz up against a wall in an alley, the realization of curiosity seizes Koujaku in a chokehold. Suddenly, he wants to know. Wants to know and doesn't know how to ask, wants to feel and doesn't know what to feel.  

 

And it hits him that he doesn't have to.  

 

He takes Noiz's hand slowly, deliberately, ignoring the way he stiffens and turns his head to glare daggers at him. Brings it to his lips and laves his tongue over the brilliant streak of crimson superimposed against the snow-white of his palm, marveling at the baby-softness, almost, of the skin.  

 

Noiz's eyes widen. Koujaku's mouth is full of the heady iron-tang of blood, but he keeps his eyes focused, trained on Noiz's, as he does it again. It's a surreal moment, time trickling honey-slow in the space between their bodies and obliterating every last one of their walls. In that moment, he doesn't know, know only that that is the most freeing realization he could have asked for. Because in that moment, he doesn't need to know—Noiz's eyes are transparent, and Koujaku can see himself reflected in them.  

 

"The line of life," Koujaku breathes, tracing a finger over where the laceration has marred almost the entirety of it. The fading taste of blood still lingers acrid at the back of his throat, and the perfect poesy of it hits him hard, on his knees before the silent-eyed jury. 

 

Maybe it strikes something within Noiz too, because he jerks his hand away in one sinuous twist.  

 

"I don't know what retribution crap you're playing at, old man, but I sure as hell don't want any of it. I don't need your pity either, so do us all a favor and go fuck yourself."  

 

Koujaku flinches at the heat behind his words. He sounds too young, too painfully like the himself of those dark years after he'd returned to Midorijima, the one steeped in a Moltov of despair, guilt, anger. In things which stifled the screams of after he'd wake up in cold sweat with his back burning and vision swirling crimson. And he can't,  _can't_ stop himself from surging forward, grabbing Noiz by the shoulders, the fine bones of them digging into his palms almost painfully.

 

"Listen, brat—Noiz," he stares him dead in the eye, doesn't give when he tries to wrench away. " _Look at me._ No one in the fucking world will pity you if you don't pity yourself. Get your head out of your ass. Because I don't pity you. It's only a projection of what you see in yourself."  

 

Noiz's eyes flicker at that, with the shadow of some unfathomable emotion, before his gaze drifts off to the side.  

 

"My parents," he begins, slow as if weighing every word in the balance of their relationship. "Locked me up in a room for ten years."  

 

Despite himself, Koujaku shudders. Something wells up in him, something blistering and chilling at the same time, and he can hardly bring himself to ask.  

 

"Why?"  

 

A muscle goes in Noiz's jaw as he grits his teeth. There's a long silence, and Koujaku is suddenly hyperaware of the hum of the air conditioning, of the rise and fall of their breathing, of how he can feel every tense, corded muscle in Noiz's shoulders. Of all the little things that seem so daunting in the void of the distance between them.  

 

And then Noiz speaks.  

 

"I can't feel pain."  

 

For a moment, Koujaku's vision tunnels. Blackens at the edges like a burn mark with the shock of it. He doesn't know what to say, or even how to process the information, faced with an existence so juxtaposed against his own. To his horror, a sharp stab of envy embeds itself deep in his chest, but it's quickly quelled by Noiz's next words.  

 

"Physical or emotional. I'm a freak. I'd keep hurting the kids I'd play with. My parents were  _ashamed_ of me."  

 

Something unwelcome surfaces inside Koujaku at that, something he tries in vain to tamp down on. He's been hanged, drawn and quartered at the altar of pain, he's spent his life running from it—and yet it's burned its name into his throat, caught him like a wildfire.  

 

And then there's this person before him, who could never understand the crimson scarlet burn wounds running across the pages of his book from the pitch-black of his. And it—that realization—surges over him like the warmth of sake. 

 

Pain is important.  

 

It is this simple epiphany that leads his hands to travel up from Noiz's shoulders to his face, cupping it in a trembling grip.  

 

"There can be no beauty without pain," he murmurs. "Pain has made you into the person you are. Every ounce you've bottled up inside."  

 

"I told you—," Noiz begins, but Koujaku cuts him off.  

 

"Did it hurt when your parents locked you up?"  

 

Noiz's brows furrow, seemingly considering the answer.  

 

"...I don't know," he finally says after another long, weighty silence. "I don't know what pain feels like."  

 

Koujaku opens his mouth, but words fail him at that simple behest—to explain  _pain._ He doesn't know how. He doesn't, so he takes Noiz's hand, and places it against the tattoo on his chest.  

 

"It feels like this. Like you're carrying your past wherever you go. Like the proof of your utter inadequacy is at the forefront of your mind every moment of the day, like a void you can never fill." Here he pauses for breath, trying to read something off the screen of Noiz's gaze, somehow—softer than he's ever seen it before, for lack of a better word.  

 

"But you know what? This pain—it's necessary. You will never know the pain of others unless you experience it yourself. You will never know happiness unless you've known pain. You will never know beauty unless you've seen the pain in ugliness. You will never live a full life unless pain teaches you something. And that is why pain is beautiful." 

 

"How do you know?"  

 

It's not malicious, and it's not affronting. Noiz's voice has no inflection. It's simply a question, but it strikes deep—all the memories, those bloodied swirls of his hatred for Ryuuhou running through his tattoos, the saving grace of his love for Aoba tearing him two different ways, eating into his heart like slow poison. Neither of which he'll be able to live without.  

 

How, indeed, does he know.  

 

Because the despair, the bone-bare truth about pain, he does know. Knows, and despises. Carries it around with his guilt in the story etched into his skin. But the other—the more important—half, that  _need_ for pain, it has only dawned on him in the reflection of those emotionless eyes wreaking havoc on everything he's never wanted to share. Clawing in with utter dispassion and forcing his reappraisal upon him.  

 

And so he opens his Pandora's box. 

 

Once he starts, it all rushes out—his yakuza father, those cursed tattoos. The murders. The guilt. And Aoba.  

 

He doesn't know why, as the darkest of things come flowing out, he feels like this— _kid,_ who's never known pain, who leads a parallel existence in every sense of the word, can understand better than anyone.  

 

When he finishes, Noiz doesn't say anything. Just looks him in the eye, moves closer and then closer until their breaths are mingling.  

 

"You made me realize what pain was, old man," he whispers. And it's enough.  

 

"And you made me realize that it was important."  

 

He's all but murmuring the words against Noiz's lips, and he's barely finished having them out before his hands are buried in Noiz's hair and their mouths are melding in one gasping, excruciating breath. There is nothing urgent in the kiss, like the slow burn of unfanned embers, like the slow passion of death. He puts everything he has into this amalgamation of just the two lost souls of the fishbowl, bites into the forbidden apple and devours it whole.  

 

"Jump." 

 

He whispers it into Noiz's ear, dropping the hands at his waist, in his hair to his thighs, lifting him up in one effortless motion.  _Too_ effortless, in fact.  

 

"You should eat more," he murmurs against the younger's lips, then catches himself. Since when did he start caring about this kid's dietary patterns? 

 

Noiz, though, doesn't take the golden opportunity to bait him, just smiles into the kiss. And Koujaku finds his hands gliding along his back, undoing the obi with a tug. He feels something coil low in his belly when it slides against his skin through the fabric of his kimono, finding voice in a low rumble deep in his chest. 

 

"Second door to the right," Noiz says when they break for breath, and fuck, Koujaku feels like one of his women, what with the way his body is flashing hot, cheeks and lips burning. It takes him a moment to even process the direction, longer still to force his limbs to comply. 

 

When they finally do reach, Koujaku lays him down on the bed with a tenderness he didn't even think he had in him where the brat was concerned. A pang goes through him as, for the briefest moment, the younger's hair flashes brilliant blue, his eyes molten caramel. It is quickly crowded out, though, by the way Noiz makes a grab for him in the way Aoba never would, in the way he recalls Noiz telling him to stop treating him like one of his girls.  

 

"What're you smirking about?" Noiz sounds, looks as fucked-out as Koujaku himself feels—almost embarrassingly, really—as he frowns up at him. Koujaku doesn't answer, just leans down to stake claim to his mouth again while his hands travel up Noiz's shirt, tracing the delicate— _too_ delicate—contours of his chest.  

 

And all the air in the room seems to disappear when his ministrations—brushing over a nipple—elicit a soft sound from Noiz. It's not even purely sexual, but it sends a shock of heat—warmth?— through Koujaku and he shudders.  

 

Their clothing seems to melt away, Koujaku's kimono falling off his shoulders, Noiz's shirt disappearing in a slow symphony of rustling noises; soft gasps as they explore, as Noiz's hands comb gently through his hair, the muted clatter of his hairpin falling to the floor as it is dislodged.  

 

He'll only notice this later, much later, but there's not a trace of red in the hair which fans out in its wake—and mull over it, half rueful, half-consternated. 

 

For now, though, he reciprocates in kind, unbuttoning, unzipping, pulling off, until Noiz's body is bared to his gaze—and spies a  _blush_ creeping its way high on his cheekbones before he whips his head to the side.  

 

"There's nothing so interesting that merits eyeballing me for ten minutes straight, you know," he mutters out. 

 

Koujaku just breathes out a laugh, turns Noiz's head back so he can see the reverence in his eyes.  

 

"Nothing except you acting your age for once," he says, then smirks before taking Noiz's half-hard cock in hand, squeezing in a vice grip before giving it a few firm tugs. "And  _this."_  

 

The risk is worth it,  _so_ worth it for the way Noiz's cock jumps in his hand, for the choked gasp he lets out which quickly subsides into a whimper.  

 

" _Ah—_ fuck you, old man."  

 

Koujaku's smirk just grows at that, and he leans down to whisper into the younger's ear.  

 

 _"Vice versa."_  

 

And then he melds their mouths again, the kiss bruising in its intensity, the slick slide of their tongues fueling the roar in his ears, the heat between his legs. And the subsequent shudder that racks through Noiz makes red flash behind his closed eyelids.  

 

In his fervor, he hasn't noticed their creep there, but deft hands are at his belt buckle, his zipper—intent on stripping away his last line of defense. It's such déjà vu, enough so that the sharp stab of paralyzing fear hits him like a dart.  

 

 _What if..._  

 

 _What if—like last time—_  

 

His hands freeze in place and his eyes flash open, the still features of the boy beneath him directly in his line of sight—still enough to be carved from wax.  

 

 _What if this is some horrible mistake after all?_  

 

He's sure of it—his frenzied thoughts are racing clear as day across his face right now, but he can't bring himself to disguise them. Not even as he watches those eyes flutter, the expression in them changing too fast for him to keep tether. He's certain that he knows the walk-away, the awkward silence that will follow his sudden indecision—he sees the eyes harden, the jaw set. 

 

And then Noiz looks him in the eye. Very deliberately rakes his nails across the ink fanned out its vicious way across Koujaku's back and bucks his hips up. 

 

Koujaku inhales sharply. Watches in a kind of frozen horror as Noiz does it again.  

 

And something in his chest lets up, like the beast that had all this while been biding its time has been silenced. 

 

Koujaku lunges to kiss Noiz. 

 

He doesn't know if it's for good. He doesn’t know for how long, even. 

 

He thrusts his hips down, bites at the pale curve of the neck that exposes itself— _no,_ _ngh_ _—_  when he circles them a certain way. 

 

But he knows that this relief—it's better than anything he's ever felt. And it's good.  

 

Because he's never really  _lived—_ unless you count living in the past, which is the worst kind of life there is. 

 

Because it strips you of the ability to write your future. 

 

It's the last coherent thought he has, before Noiz's demanding hands are sliding the jeans off his hips, the bandages off his torso, the brace off his neck—and coming to wrap around his dick, thumb digging into the slit. The blood is pounding too hard in his ears for him to discern the noise he makes at that, but the brat's satisfied smirk says it all. 

 

"Who's on top now, huh?"  

 

"Still— _ngh_ _—_ still me, brat," he grunts out with a bite to his lip, twisting at a pierced nipple before yanking his legs apart.  

 

"Do you have—,"  

 

The brat is still recovering from that onslaught, nipples peaked temptingly and flushed chest heaving, but he manages to raise an eyebrow.  

 

"Of course," Koujaku says, breathing out a sigh. He wants to do this properly, he  _does,_ but he has a feeling both of them will spontaneously combust if he drags this out any longer.  

 

So he bites at the jut of Noiz's collarbone, reaching down to tug the a few of the piercings in his dick, drinking in the high, broken noises he earns. Goes lower, lower still, pausing to nip and tongue at his nipples before bypassing his cock entirely to ghost his mouth over his fluttering hole, stained a pretty pink.  

 

Noiz's body jerks, more out of shock than anything, but before his warning hand can find Koujaku's hair, he's buried his face where his tongue was moments ago. 

 

"Stop—what are you—,"  

 

Koujaku cuts Noiz's building protests off by using the hand that is not holding his thighs apart to aim a cruel tug to his apadravya piercing, forcing a long, low moan out of him as he shudders and jerks. His cock spurts precome, and Koujaku gathers it up, using it to slick up his fingers before pushing one inside, its passage eased by his own spit.  

 

 _"_ _Ahhh_ _—_ fuck—," Noiz's back arches, and Koujaku used that window of opportunity to curl his fingers, the angle perfect.  

 

 _"_ Fuck  _Koujaku_ if you do that again—," Noiz half-screams as his body jerks, helpless against Koujaku's ministrations. 

 

Koujaku just smiles.  

 

"Oh, you mean  _this?"_ He curls his fingers again and Noiz  _whines._  

 

"I'll come I'll come stop or I swear I'll fucking come  _right now."_  

 

Koujaku chances a glance up, and the sight makes him shift uncomfortably in an attempt to curb his own arousal. Noiz's eyes are screwed shut, tears gathering at the corners, and his dick is flushed an angry red and throbbing. It makes his own cock pulse with the need to get inside the younger and fuck him so hard he  _cries._  

 

He's meticulous with the rest of the preparation—as meticulous as he can be, anyway, with Noiz bucking forward into him every chance he gets, and his own trembling hands and vision stained red at the edges with arousal. 

 

All things considered, therefore, it's a moment when he finally lines himself up and pushes in with one sure thrust.  

 

"Ngh—Noiz—it's good—you're—," he's moaning low, gibberish into Noiz's ear, trying with everything in him to not come inside him right then. Noiz's hands have moved to wrap around his shoulders, heels digging into his back, and it's intoxicating, this position.  

 

"I know. I know—but move, old man,  _move."_  

 

And it's like Noiz's heated whisper has snapped some fraying line of control within him, because he  _moves._ Pulls all the way out, and snaps his hips back home again and again and  _again,_ tugging at Noiz's cock rough and fast until he's sobbing, until he's clenching around Koujaku with a tightness he couldn't have imagined possible.  

 

Until he's clawing at his back in the same motion which started it all and Koujaku finds comfort in it. 

 

 _Erode me._  

 

 _Erode what I've been._  

 

 _Write what I will be._  

 

 

And now, now Koujaku feels the inevitable drawing near, the coil in his stomach tightening to an unbearable degree, and he pistons his hips faster, angles them to make Noiz  _scream._ Yanks at his piercings until he shudders, body convulsing before going rigid as ropes of white splatter his stomach. And  _then_ he lets go, chases release with Noiz's whisper of  _go on_ _Koujaku_ _come for me_ ringing in his ears. 

 

When his world flashes white, when the coil in his stomach shatters, all that's on his mind is the way Noiz has said his name when he'd come.  

 

And that, he was realizing for the first time, was okay. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me with your worst.


End file.
